


And I Know The Way Home

by entanglednow



Category: Being Human (US)
Genre: Biting, Blood, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one way to fall off the wagon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Know The Way Home

There's more than one way to fall off the wagon.

When you turn your back on the lifestyle it isn't just the blood you're saying no to. It's _everything_ , everything you were, everything you meant. The person you were gets stripped away and you're left looking at yourself, taking a good, long look at who you are underneath. Because the need for it, the craving, it goes deep, it goes all the way through, and you're naked and raw without it. You had to find things to replace it, or go mad, monotonous, never-ending, brain-occupying things, things which aren't _food_.

In the small hours of the morning, when the world's sluggish and cold and silent as the dead, Aidan has to remind himself that it's worth it. That it's all worth it. Though it never sounds quite as convincing then.

The blood isn't an addiction. The blood isn't just an addiction. It's a necessity, it's part of him, and one that he can't change, that he can't ignore. Two hundred years of it. It's understandable that it colours everything, that it shapes everything, a never-ending circle that always comes back to the beginning. It's like a shake under the skin, every single one of your atoms in motion, constant and maddening. Desperation made real, a weakness that goes all the way down to the bones of him, a weakness that was _given_ to him.

But at the end of the day there's one brutal, bottom line. There's a part of Aidan, a sick, shaking, desperate part of him, that wants to just give in. That's just sitting there waiting for him to stop fighting. There's a part of him that wants it all back. Every grisly, horrible second of it. Because it was familiar and easy, and everything since then has been hard. Or maybe it's just exhausting to resist all the god damn time. Sometimes it feels like that's all he has any more. The restraint, the need, the frustration. Like he's balanced on the edge and there's no room to take a step back. Or maybe he's cursed to forever stand in that narrow space with no room to fight. Maybe that's his punishment.

Sometimes, no matter how hard Aidan tries, how many promises he makes, to himself, to other people, that part wins. It claws its way up his throat and turns everything red. But this time there are no bodies. This time there's no living, breathing, screaming person, bleeding out in the cheap sheets of a cheap apartment. This is different. This is...messier.

No one dies.

No one dies but it still might be _worse_.

This is easy, and it shouldn't be, this is the one thing that shouldn't be easy. It shouldn't be like this. It should be like nails under the skin. It should make him feel used and worthless, this is everything he's been fighting against, everything he's been pushing away from. But it's familiar and old, and Aidan tells himself that it's better than a person, better than leaving an empty shell in some bed somewhere, dead eyes staring back at him. It has to be better than that.

But he's not sure it is.

This is bright red fingers on layers of wool and cotton and then bright red fingerprints on skin, still tacky, still wet and Aidan's vibrating so hard he can hear every breath falling out of him, harsh and too dry. The wet rasp of it like a saw. Until his mouth is crushed shut under one that tastes like old blood, impatience and brutality.

He's always broken too easily for Bishop, skin pressed up and into the drag of his teeth like he never learned better, like he's never seen everything the other's capable of, or incapable of. Words jammed in his throat that he refuses to say. But that's no comfort when his fist is caught in the hair at the back of Bishop's neck, twisted there, pulling and digging, fingers restless. Refusing to speak isn't a victory when his hands and his breath and every twitch of skin says that he wants this. He can keep his teeth clenched on the admission as hard as he likes, it means nothing. He still stretches and hisses when he's pressed into the sheets and broken open, blood curling down his chest in lines and filling the room with red, miles and miles of red. A thumb draws it across his skin, smears it there like paint. His effortless ruination under Bishop's hands, every time.

Bishop's other hand is curled round his throat just hard enough to be cruel, like he can feel that angry line of self-disgust, that refusal to just give in completely. Aidan could probably still get out of here - has to tell himself that - that he could still leave. Even if he left bleeding, even if he had to fight for it - break for it - he could get up and get out into the cold air, breathing in the smell of the city and, yes, maybe he'd still have something in the way of pride. For all that he'd leave feeling hollowed out and raw and disgusted with himself in a way he won't be able to shake off.

Though he isn't going to pretend that going through with this won't leave him hollowed out as well. In a completely different way. There's a reason he stayed away, there's a reason he hates coming back, hates seeing _his_ face. He isn't always strong enough to say no.

Aidan remembers this. He remembers what it feels like to be here. There are enough memories layered over each other that there's no forgetting it. He remembers the taste of him, and the weight of him. He remembers - can't help but remember - how Bishop had given him _everything_. Before there were strings attached. Before he saw them, or cared about any of them. Or maybe he made himself care about it all. Maybe Bishop really would have let him do anything then - as long as he'd _stayed._

He'd been Bishop's favourite, and for all the hate and anger and frustration, Aidan knows he still is. He should hate that. He should hate that and it kills him that he doesn't. That he'll push it and fight it and despise it - and there's still that part of him that's half terrified that one day he'll push too hard and really, truly be free.

He didn't have the strength to say no an hour ago, what fucking hope does he have now? Pressed back into the pillows of a bed that doesn't matter, hips canted up, one hand thrown over his head to press against the headboard, to brace every push, every skid of his heel in the sheets, and tense of his thigh muscle, where it's pressed - crushed, against Bishop's waist.

There's blood everywhere and most of it's his, most of it...but not all of it, head ringing like it remembers being drunk, like he isn't two hundred years dead, and if he just digs his fingers in tight enough everything will be easy again.


End file.
